Brandon's Birthday

We celebrated Jason's little brother's 19th birthday last night. Brandon is such a sweetheart, when we asked him where he wanted to celebrate he said, "Chuck E. Cheese so the kids can play." What 19 year old is thinking of his nieces and nephew and wants to celebrate at Chuck E. Cheese? Brandon is in the Marine Corps and his activation date was just moved from December 1st to October 1st. They are sending him to Iraq. Scary! He is brave and so are his parents.

Weston LOVES his Grandpa.

And that's all the pics because I dropped my camera face first and broke it. I had to buy a new one today. I hope it is a good one. What a month... new computer and camera. A word to the wise... DON'T DROP YOUR CAMERA!

Exploring

We decided to take a weekend off from boating to explore. We drove up through Rockport, into Kamas, ate lunch at the Gateway Grill, and then went up into the High Uintas to hike and play at some lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and EXPLORE! Utah is a beautiful state. I love Summer time!

We started our exploration off by seeing a golden eagle on the side of the road!

This was actually steep. That was running water below them. It made me a little nervous.

I like this picture because the scenery is beautiful of course but look at the 3 children standing in a row in the background.

By the end of the day Avaree was a good little hiker and rock climber. We were proud.

We ended the exploration with a stop at Cold Stone Creamery in Park City.

A perfect ending.

Strike A Pose

This is how Baylee and Griffin kept themselves entertained on our drive home...

Friday Fun

A few guys from the neighborhood have a band so we get together annually as a neighbors to listen to them perform. It is always a fun, low key night listening to live music, eating food, visiting with friends, and letting kids play and dance.

Brittany, Sharwan, and Baylee (just got back from girls camp earlier that day)

Ruby and Avaree

Griffin putting Weston to bed for me so we could grab some dinner with the Domina's.

My ALL TIME favorite dessert... the molton chocolate cake from Chili's. If you haven't tried it... YOU HAVE TOO!

homemade jam

I LOVE homemade jam and homemade bread but I never dared to attempt to make it until last year. My friend Tracy is a pro and she forced me to learn and I'm so glad she did because it's not that hard. YOU can totally do it if you were like me and thought you couldn't. All you need is this box of pectin that you can get at any grocery store and some jars and lids of course, but I just use the recipe and the instructions in the box. Sealing them can be a bit tricky your first time. You've got to be able to work fast. I recommend you have a friend do it with you. One who knows how or one who wants to learn too! It is easier to have 2 sets of hands. Mine and Tracy's only problem was we would start talking and loose our concentration and mess up what we were doing. If you are by yourself... make freezer jam. It's WAY easy! I did some of both. Little tip... you can add some crushed pineapple to your jam to make the fruit go further and you can't even taste it. Anyway I really owe the easiness of it to Tracy because she comes over with 4 kids in tow, brings all her supplies, and brings me jars, and kicks butt! We got it all done in less than a couple of hours! WAY worth it! Good luck if any of you want to attempt! Thanks again Tracy!

P.S. This jam will be gone in a few months. My family LOVES it!

Bear Lake

Jason's Mom and Ed have an RV so we headed up to Bear Lake with them to camp and boat for 4th of July weekend. I hadn't been to Bear Lake since I was a kid. It was fun but I'm not a big camper. I like to think I'm not a priss but here are my reasons for not being BIG on camping...

1. I DON'T like to be dirty and I don't like my kids to be dirty either

2. I don't want to wait for 40 minutes to use a cold shower that a bunch of people already used or dirty toilets for that matter.

3. It's a lot of work! Thanks to my mother-in-law for making ALL the food preparations. If it were up to me we would have ate out every meal.

4. I have horrible allergies. I was dying all weekend. Every store in town was sold out of allergy medicine to top it off.

5. I need my sleep. We slept on a nice air mattress but I just don't sleep well sharing it with 2 children and my husband.

6. My kids are not good travelers. It's so fun to get out but they need their sleep too and they just don't sleep well when they aren't at home and...

7. Of course we ended up at the local instacare at 10 pm on the 4th! Weston choked on a hot dog. I cut it up small too but he still choked and was wheezing loudly after dinner. I've heard so many horror stories lately so I called our pediatrician to see what they said and they said we should take him to an instacare to be safe. We took him in and he was fine. The hot dog must have made it's way down but they did say that he was on the verge of an ear infection. Honestly, why does this stuff always happen when you are away from home??

We made some good memories though... playing at the playground, the lake, boating, eating, laughing, looking at the stars, getting tan, making smores, eating fresh famous raspberry shakes, watching fireworks, feeding the carp, and traveling to and from! It was oh so worth it and I will totally do it again! My camera died half way through our trip so here are some of the pics I got...(mostly of the kids and kind of deja vu from our other weekends at the lake.)

Lately, I can't get Weston to look at the camera and smile. He knows I want him too but he just looks away and turns very serious.

Trying to catch up on sleep. They were both out the second the boat started moving.

Playing on the beach

I love this picture of Baylee and Wes. It was kind of choppy so the tube got some good air.

Jason cut his foot and we didn't have a band aid so we got creative and used a diaper!

Feeding the gross carp

After eating a famous raspberry shake... worth going to Bear Lake for.

Getting hosed off after

It's always good to be home and sleep in our own beds!

We hope everyone had a HAPPY 4th!

These is my Words

Has anyone read this book?? My book club read it a couple of months ago but I never got around to it. So I just read it and LOVED it! By far the best book I've read since we started the book club. In fact, it's probably my favorite book. I NEED TO DISCUSS... It was sad but it left me appreciating my life and family so much more. I like books that uplift and this ladies character was awesome. She was strong, motherly, tough, smart, courageous, humble. I just loved her! I couldn't put the book down. There was constantly something happening. It was set back in the 1800's but I could still totally relate. If you need a good read... this is the one.